Chatrie v. United States · ¶61

More generally, the Government’s approach to Fourth Amendment protection would raise a host of workability issues. At the top of the list: What percentage of users would have to sign up for a service to make doing so non-voluntary? The Government posited at argument that if 80 percent of active Google accountholders had enabled Location History, the case would be “much closer.” Tr. of Oral. Arg. 92. After all, the Government candidly noted, even possessing a cell phone is not truly “indispensable” (to use Car penter’s word): “[S]omething like 90 percent of people have [them].” Tr. of Oral. Arg. 92. So where to draw the line? And after that, the questions only multiply. Would a user lose Fourth Amendment protection if a highly popular cellphone feature became less so over time? What if the use of a given feature is ubiquitous among (but only among) a subset of the population (say, an age…

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